Last month, we saw the third serious Amtrak accident of 2018 - the third in just in six weeks! Our "infrastructure president" should have his golden hair on fire about our third world inter-city train system. But of course, he can't be bothered. He just gave away $1,500,000,000 in tax cuts to himself and his wealthy pals, so a real effort to fix our miserable public infrastructure isn't going to happen. Fromt time to time there are blog posts and news stories about how aircraft in France struggle to get to their destinations ahead of the TGV trains, and nearly always fail! Every modern nation has rapid rail transit, just as they have universal health care, with the exception of the good old USA.

Which leads me to this opinion. I think Amtrak should be downsized. I know Amtrak's charter requires it to function as a 48-state federally subsidized train network. But it is an imbalanced network. California might be able to build its own high-speed coastal rail system. Amtrak is crucial to the economy of the five city megalopolis from Boston to DC. But it is not crucial anywhere else. It has to run on freight train tracks. Ridership is poor. It can keep the Chicago to LA routes for nostalgia buffs. But it's time to reduce Amtrak to mostly northeast service only. This would require Congressional action. And rather than downsize Amtrak to make it easier to kill, I would argue we need a fully-funded Amtrak to serve the northeast. No reduction in funding. Just a new charter and mission to keep the most important part of the United States running (most important region outside of California and Texas, certainly). Amtrak needs to run better. We need new everything in the northeast. We need new roads, bridges airports, train networks, and subways. Amtrak should be re-chartered as part of a 20-year northeast infrastructure rebuilding plan.

There's just one big problem. We're broke. It's a non-stater. And so the slide into oblivion continues.

There is no doubt New York City needs congestion pricing. It it is to remain a World City, like London, it must. But we can see that this proposal will fail. There is too much resistance from the counties outside the city. Just one more reason for this city to be its own Federalized district, like DC. New York is too important to this country to be ruled by Westchester, Long Island and Albany. Paris, London and Tokyo are national capitals. They don’t have this chronic political problem that New York has. Let’s fix it. New York is the economic capital of the United States. And it can’t have people driving into midtown who don’t NEED to.

Why? The USA missed its chance after World War II, when it had the capital and its rail corridors could have gotten the width they needed for freight and passenger trains on their own tracks. If the US tried to make room for high speed rail on the west and east coasts today, it would cost hundreds of billions. Of course, the US is still spending $2 Billion a week in Afghanistan. So I guess we can't afford it.

In France, Germany Japan and China, where four of the world class train systems are found, the high speed passenger services were built from scratch, not piggybacked on an old, existing, mostly freight rail system. A world war helped, and that included a lot of bombing by the US and UK. But I don't think that's any excuse. The USA remained a wealthy nation through the space age. Just look at what happened to Penn Station. The French National Rail Corporation would die laughing if it ever got a good look at Penn Station and Amtrak. After all, France is a first world country, while the United States barely qualifies as a banana republic. And I wrote these words before news came out that the state of New York is considering yet another private company to manage the crumbling Penn Station.

This ties into the bigger, more obvious issue that mass transit in the US is generally terrible. The underlying reason is the same: the best chance for planning and funding was in the last century (either before the 1920 crash, or just after WWII). In my father's day, New York City took care of it's essential infrastructure. The automobile had not yet become the dominant means of transportation, and Robert Moses had not yet rearranged the city to accommodate millions of cars. Now, after decades of neglect, the bill is coming due. I hope the city gets the help it needs, because it's approaching a dangerous tipping point.

I have always liked the Liberty Hotel in Boston since it opened in 2007. The Liberty is one of the bestter adaptive reuse projects of this century, as it turned Boston's nortorious Charles Street Jail into a five-star hotel. Here is a video tour of the hotel in 2017.

The exterior of the old, medieval jail is still intact. It always had a grim and depressing aspect, built next to the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, on the grounds of the Massachusetts General Hospital. The hotel is really imaginative, and makes clever use of the existing architecture. The old jail has been used in a couple of movies, and I think it even appeared once in a Spenser for Hire episode.

And even when the state of New York maintains its rails, the waste and corruption is is easy to identify.

Even if Trump and the Republicans actually gave a rat's ass about the state of America's cities or public transportation, the Administration's crippling incompetence and absurd scandals make serious action nearly impossible. This is what middle America voted for, and all of us, beginning with the people of New York, are going to pay for it.

When John Roebling designed a mile-long suspension bridge to connect Manhattan to Brooklyn, there was no question what it was going to be named. A bridge should be named after the town or neighborhood it connects to - Brooklyn! But over 100 years later, when Boston had the chance to build an iconic bridge between itself and Charlestown, and simply call it the Charlestown Bridge, it walked into a political battle over whether to name it after a civil rights attorney or a Revolutionary War battlefield. And what did Boston do? They named it after both. Clarity and courage!

What happens when a state names infrastructure after the wrong person? Well, New York holds that title as well. John F. Kennedy Airport is named after a president from Massachusetts. He had sex with Marilyn Monroe here. But JFK wasn't from here. His brother was a US Senator for New York for just two years (and he got a bridge renamed for him in 2008).

Renaming Idlewild International Airport was a costly, hasty error, in my opinion. New York City gave its biggest airport the wrong name just so they could be first to rename infrastructure after JFK (just six weeks after his assassination). If any city should have renamed their airport to JFK it should have been Boston. Can you imagine an alternate universe in which the big New York airport is named after someone who actually lived or died in New York? How about Joey Ramone from Queens who sung a damn song about the very part of Queens the airport is located? Or how about David Bowie, who lived his last 22 years in New York? Or maybe even Jane Jacobs, who stood up to Robert Moses and saved SOHO? Or how about Margaret Sanger?

I meant to share this in June, when I stayed at El Blok for the first time. It was my ninth June vacation in Vieques. I had stayed at Malecon House for seven straight years. But with that inn under new management, I decided to give El Blok a try. I'm glad I did. I had been to their bar and restaurant in previous years. But this was my first time as a hotel guest, and I loved it. Despite some door lock issues (I think their security server lost power a few times), and the failed promise to provide a cooler to take to the beaches every day, I think El Block is a fantastic, modern hotel to make one's "base" during a stay in Vieques. The longer the stay, the better. Don't just visit for the bio-luminescent bay. Stay for the beaches and one of the best bars in the Caribbean.

I have been sitting on this blog post since May of 2016. I was going to call it, "Paris Dooms Most Cars More Than 20 Years Old To The Crusher." But this story has grown over the months. Paris is trying to get to the point where very few people own cars, and those who do, use it to escape the city, not use them to travel within the giant metropolis. That's how I use my car in Manhattan. It is my get out of town for the weekend ride.

First, Paris is in a deep geological basin, which worsens the smog problem caused by the cars. And secondly, it has one of the best and easiest to learn and use subway systems in Europe. If there’s one city on the continent which could reduce private car use, it’s Paris. Banning pre 1997 cars is a good idea, but Paris should follow London’s wise example and charge operators for driving in the central city.

Paris has the mass transit infrastructure to do this, of course. It is already faster and cheaper to get to any of Paris' 20 arrondissements by metro or bus. And Paris has confidence that it can increase capacity to carry more passengers who give up cars. New York couldn't do that. No US city could. London could, and it has encourages a shift to mass transit with its congestion tolls, now going strong in its 13th year. If Paris combined its aggressive car restrictions with London-style congestion tolls, it would see results even sooner. Let's see how Paris is doing in a year (2018).

I said it back in May, and now more and more people agree: The World Trade Center, and particularly One World Trade Center, is a big mess. And it's not because of the current rat infestation. It is an architectural and economic failure. And now it is a lasting symbolic one as well.

At least the name Freedom Tower was dropped. But that's just a positive footnote in an otherwise depressing saga. However, thanks to the media, and the popularity of our enless wars, tourists will still call it the "Freedom Tower" forever.

The new One World Trade, the world's most delayed, most expensive skyscraper ever, is a brutal monument to the forces that govern this city and nation. Money, plutocratic megalomania, and the arrogance that attends them, have labored and brought forth yet another monster. Congratulations America, your rebuilt, lower Manhattan super-tall trophy tower lives!

Surprise, surprise, New York infrastructure is deterioratingbefore our eyes! How could this possibly happen? Everyone knows the city, the state, and the nation have been pouring billions into creating the infrastructure of the future while putting millions to work and stimulating solid economic growth. Right? Or maybe not!

It would have been all too easy to commit billions to rebuild the infrastructure in Manhattan, much of which is now in its second century. But no one thought of that. And here we are.

Right now, Manhattan is riding the biggest real estate bubble in its history. The median price of a condo in the borough is well over $1 Million, with the price far higher in downtown neighborhoods, such as the Lower East Side, where this water main break and sinkhole occured. Not that it will make us little people feel better, but what we are seeing are overpriced luxury homes being built on top of decaying infrasturure. And many of these developments are in what are now flood zones going forward as sea levels rise and more Atlantic hurricanes are expected to turn left and make landfall in the region.

My biggest gripe with New York, beyond the fact that it is an imperialst, even pro-war city with a dangerous wealth gap, is that its infrastucture is terrible. We have outstanding drinking water. But that won't last. We are told that the subways are reliable. Yes, in spite of the fact that the system is barely holding together. When I look at Tokyo, Hong Kong, and even London (the other "Capitals of the World" right?), I see better infrastucture. We New Yorkers won't realize the lost opportunities we had to rebuild until it is too late.

The 2009 Federal stimulus package might have been our last chance to rebuild. We shall see if I'm correct.